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Nomination of the Student Hurricane Network
2006 LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbard Exemplary
Public Service Award for a Student Project
Submitted by:
Hillary Exter, Director of Student Organizations and Publicity and Thomas Schoenherr,
Assistant Dean, Public Interest Resource Center, Fordham Law School
Harlene Katzman, Dean of the Center for Public Interest Law, Adrienne Fitzgerald, Associate
Director of Pro Bono Services, and Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin, Dean of Student Services,
Columbia Law School
Bill Quigley, Distinguished Professor of Law, Director of the Law Clinic and Gillis Long
Poverty Law Center, Loyola University New Orleans School of Law
Julie H. Jackson, Assistant Dean for Public Interest Programs and Russa Kittredge, Career
Development Office, Tulane University Law School
Deb Ellis, Assistant Dean for Public Interest Law, NYU School of Law
Karen Comstock, Assistant Dean for Public Service, Cornell Law School
Diane T. Chin, Director, Public Interest Program, Stanford Law School
Jean Marie Hackett, Director of the Office of Student Affairs and Elizabeth Kane, Director of the
Public Service Programs Office, Brooklyn Law School
Jessica L. Kitson, Public Interest Advisor, Rutgers School of Law - Newark
Charlene E. Gomes, Public Interest Coordinator, American University Washington College of
Law
1. Purpose and scope of the work: The Student Hurricane Network (SHN) was initiated
by a small group of law students in the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
SHN was formed to mobilize the skills and energies of law students throughout the country to
provide critically needed legal support to individuals, communities and legal organizations in the
Gulf Coast in the aftermath of the destruction caused by the hurricanes.
SHN creates and coordinates volunteer opportunities for law students to get involved in
the relief efforts and rebuilding process. The legal questions, problems, and issues facing the
people and communities throughout the Gulf Coast are monumental in scale, and will remain for
years to come. During winter and spring breaks, 12/05 –1/06 and 2/06 – 3//06 almost 1,000
students from over 60 law schools throughout the country traveled to the Gulf Coast. As a result
of the student’s organizing work, the delegations increased from over 240 to 700 students!
Dozens of the students returned to spend the summer as legal interns with the organizations they
worked with. A wave of student trips are planned for this summer. In addition to the work
during school breaks, students are involved with “long-distance” research projects: a listserv has
been developed and projects available on the SHN website.
Students are working with a broad range of organizations and providing assistance in
such areas as civil legal services (e.g. including landlord-tenant, mortgage foreclosure, FEMA
benefits, insurance, tax assessments, bankruptcy, assistance to small businesses), civil
rights/civil liberties, criminal justice, juvenile justice, racial justice, economic justice,
employment/labor law, and community development.
SHN plans include: a report of its work, lobbying effort in Washington, DC, development
of disaster preparedness plan for other communities, and Matchmakers for Justice to pair law
students with displaced residents.
2. Innovative approach or model to impact fellow law students and the community:
The four founding law students have created an organization, SHN, which has developed
into a truly national network. Over 50 law schools currently have chapters and/or institutional
liaisons. SHN has built a strong organization, with working committees and subcomittees to
carry out its work. The work has involved law students at all stages of their law school careers
(e.g. first, second, third year, fourth year evening, LLM students) as well as law faculty and
administrators. SHN participants have included students with extensive background in public
interest law as well as those with no such prior history. SHN has created the largest
mobilization of students to the South since Freedom Summer in the early Civil Rights movement
of the early 1960s. The work of law students with SHN during a short, but intensive period of
time has had a significant impact. (See # 3)
An important part of the work of SHN has been to keep the community’s attention on the
problems and issues confronting the people of the Gulf Coast. SHN has done this in a variety of
ways which have touched the law school community as well as many cities and towns
throughout the country. SHN Chapters have done report backs, including slide presentations
which vividly portray the current conditions. The media has profiled SHN delegations.
Newspaper articles have appeared in legal publications such as the New York Law Journal and
the Virginia Law Weekly, as well as local papers and television channels such as the New York
Daily News, New York 1 Cable News, Jackson Clarion Ledger (MS), Oregon Daily Emerald,
The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), The Pitt News (PA), The Georgetown Voice (DC), Cherry
Hill Courier Post (N J), the Badger Herald (Madison, WI) and the Iowa City Press Citizen.
SHN is becoming involved in policy work and building partnerships with nationwide legal
organizations and law student associations.
3. Outcomes and accomplishments:
Law students have worked with a broad range of legal and grassroots organizations to
provide legal support including: Access to Justice, the ACLU of Louisiana (LA), Acorn of LA,
the Advancement Project, the Advocacy Center, Common Ground, Community Labor United,
Equal Justice Center, Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University (“Loyola Clinic”),
Human Rights Watch, the Justice Center’s Capital Appeals and Innocence Project and their LA
Capital Assistance Center, the Juvenile Justice Project of LA, Lawyers Committee for Civil
Rights Under the Law, LA Bar Young Lawyer’s Division, Mississippi (MI) Bar Young
Lawyer’s Division, MI Center for Justice, MI Rural Legal Services, MI Volunteer Lawyer’s
Project, NAACP of LA, National Association of Katrina Evacuees, National Employment Law
Project, National Immigration Law Center, National Immigration Project, New Orleans Legal
Assistance (NOLAC)—Southeast LA Legal Services, Oxfam/MI Immigrant Rights Alliance,
Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (“PHRF”), the Pro Bono Project,
Rebuilding LA Coalition, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The impact of the work has been significant. The majority or legal services and public
defender organizations were woefully under-funded before the hurricanes. After, their offices
were decimated as staff could not return as a result of loss of their homes. Yet the need for legal
services was at a critical level. SHN’s work—through remote research in the early fall and on
the ground during winter and spring break—has provided sorely needed legal support. Each
organization with whom students have worked extol their work. While the space constraints of
this application cannot do justice to the breadth of work undertaken by SHN students, several
examples of the accomplishments are described.
SHN participants working with NOLAC and the Loyola Law Clinic have done extensive
legal research and advocacy to protect the rights of low-income tenants affected by the
hurricanes, secure the ability of evacuees to obtain housing vouchers and remain secure in
temporary housing. Students working with the PHRF and the Loyola Clinic played a critical
role in the litigation to stop the demolition of houses in the lower 9th ward without prior notice to
the owners. Their physical presence on the ground prevented bull-dozing in violation of a state
temporary restraining order. SHN volunteers painstakingly performed the documentation and
legal research which resulted in a negotiated settlement of the lawsuit.
SHN law students were involved in the reviewing hundreds of court files which resulted
in the cancellation of scores of warrants against juveniles who are now able to pick up their lives.
Over 50 people were released from prison as a result of the work of students who worked with
the courts and criminal justice organizations—these individuals had been “disappeared” in the
system after the hurricanes: some had been in jail because they were poor—they could not pay
even low bail before the hurricane hit, others had been held well beyond their sentences.
The work of SHN volunteers has played an important role in bringing attention to the
plight of the over 25,000 immigrant workers who have traveled to New Orleans to contribute to
the clean-up and rebuilding. SHN outreach to laborers at day laborer job sites and the temporary
locations where the workers (e.g hotels, camps) has been important in documenting the flagrant
labor law, occupational safety and health violations. Students’ have provided “know your
rights” education to workers. This has led to the filing of lawsuits against some of the most
widespread law-breaking employers and will hopefully lead to enforcement and protections for
workers and the creation of a worker center.
4. Impact of the experience:
Involvement in legal support to individuals and communities in the Gulf Coast has had a
profound impact on the majority of the 1,000 participants involved. Obviously, the extent of the
devastation and its impact on the survivors’ lives is extraordinary. Students have shared many
dimensions of their experience including their exposure to the inequalities in the Gulf Coast that
existed before the hurricanes—the poverty, disparity of wealth, lack of economic opportunity,
failing schools, environmental problems (e.g. Cancer Alley), police brutality, grossly under-
funded public defender organizations; gross failures in the government’s response; the heroism
and selflessness of so many people responding to the needs of the survivors as well as the greed
of others; the enormity of the human and legal needs of the survivors; a sense of the battles over
the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast—what will be built, where and for whom; the
length of time, likely to be decades before any significant rebuilding will be done.
The impact of the experience has been multi-dimensional. Students have worked
tirelessly to create and build an organization--SHN has grown from three students to now more
than 1,000. Local chapters are developing long-term relationships with organizations in the Gulf
Coast to carry out work over the long haul.
On an individual level, the impact has been profound. Students have come to deeply
understand how precarious the lives’ of poor people and how limited their access to justice. A
number of students who have not previously done public interest work and are considering
public service career paths, post-graduate fellowships, or searching for firms with meaningful
commitment to pro bono. Others have redoubled their commitment to public service. Each
participant has a deep sense of the centrality of access to justice in work they undertake whether
it’s in their hometown, the Gulf Coast or elsewhere.
5. What was learned:
Students realize the efficacy of collective work and their own skills and power to make a
difference. They learned that with sensitivity, hard work, and love they could create something
very powerful. They learned that other students really care and will rise to the occasion.
They are have learned that lawyers can play many roles, including advisor, litigator,
facilitator, teacher, media contact, and listener. They learned that lawyering is not always done
at the office or in court, but that it also occurs on the streets, in press conferences and hearings,
and community meetings.
Students learned that there are some extraordinary people out there giving of themselves
in the fullest ways—and that they are among this group of people.
Faculty and administrators learned that students are an inspiration to them and capable of
so much.
Students learned that in the midst of death, destruction and suffering there can still
somehow be hope, determination, and beauty. They learned that people who have very little
in material goods will share whatever they have, while others with a lot more may refuse to.
They learned that New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities were very special places,
particularly to people who called it home, and that people want to return home.
Students learned that there is much work to do. They saw that the work includes
assistance to individuals with particular problems as well as issues that are systematic and
complex, and that is important to respond to both. SHN participants learned that is it our
responsibility to stay involved and that engagement is exhausting and exhilarating.
6. Biography:
The Student Hurricane Network has been a collective project. The initiators include:
Anna Arceneaux and Laila Hlass, both ’06 graduates, Columbia Law School
Morgan Williams, ’07, Tulane University School of Law
Vanessa Spinazola, ’07, and Tress Valentine Loyola Law School
Katy Shuman and Allison Maimona, both ’06 graduates, Fordham Law School
Allison Korn, ’07, University of Mississippi
Jeff Jamison, ’06, Harvard Law School
Students who have taken on major leadership include:
American University
Lauren Bartlett, '07, Communications and Projects Committee
Brooklyn Law School
Josie Beets, '07, Leadership Committee
Kesav Wable, '08, Communications Committee Chair
Columbia Law School
Adam Pulver, '08, Communications Committee
Melody Wells, '08, Communications Committee Chair
Cornell Law School
Andy Cowan, '08, Communications Committee
Jonothan Sclarsic, '08, Communications Committee
Jamie Rogers, '08, Research Coordinator
University of Denver Law School
Michael Goldstine, '08, Lobbying and Communications Committee
Fordham Law School
Anamaria Segura, '07, Projects Committee Chair
Jeremy Pfetsch, '07, Communications Committee
Georgetown Law School
Andrew Doss, '08, Lobbying Effort Coordinator
Loyola Law School
Erica Garnett, '07, Leadership Committee
Heather Ansert, '07, Lobbying Effort and Admin Committee
Morgan Sears, '07, Treasurer
Tressa Valentine, '07, Projects Committee
University of Maryland
Clayton Solomon, '08, Projects Committee
Sean Mahoney, '07, Projects Committee
University of Mississippi
Allison Korn, '07, Admin Committee Chair
University of Nebraska
Sean Zehtab, '08, Projects Committee
New York University Law School
Carrie Johnson, '08, Research Coordinator
Mimi Franke, '08, Communications Committee
Jackie Brand, '07, Projects Committee
University of Pittsburgh
Gina Mosley, '08, Admin and Projects Committees
Thurgood Marshall Law School
Courtney Broussard, '07, Leadership Committee
Tulane Law School
Agnieszka McPeak, '07, Project Committee Chair
Kati Bambrick, '09, Communications and Projects Committee
Mary Nagle, '08, Projects Committee
Morgan Williams, '07, Admin Committee
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